Wolfenstein: Youngblood | Cheerful Ghost

Wolfenstein Gets It's New Blood & It's A Little Messy: My Review of Wolfenstein Youngblood

jdodson gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale

This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.

jdodson gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale

This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.

It's a pretty well tried release strategy to release a main line shooter entry and then drop a gaggle of smaller DLC with it or one big story game alongside it using the engine of the game you just made. With the Wolfenstein franchise Besthesda drops one extra follow up story campaign alongside the main entry and Wolfenstein Youngblood was the follow up campaign that launched after New Order.

Originally I picked up Wolfenstein Youngblood on Switch and while it's not the optimal place to play it if you want the best graphics, it's a solid port worthy of the game. That said, when Wolfenstein: Alt History Collection (which contains each game in the new Wolfenstein series)... Read All It's a pretty well tried release strategy to release a main line shooter entry and then drop a gaggle of smaller DLC with it or one big story game alongside it using the engine of the game you just made. With the Wolfenstein franchise Besthesda drops one extra follow up story campaign alongside the main entry and Wolfenstein Youngblood was the follow up campaign that launched after New Order.

Originally I picked up Wolfenstein Youngblood on Switch and while it's not the optimal place to play it if you want the best graphics, it's a solid port worthy of the game. That said, when Wolfenstein: Alt History Collection (which contains each game in the new Wolfenstein series) was on XBox for cheap, I picked it up to play Youngblood and finally completed the main story portion of the game.

Wolfenstein Youngblood takes everything from the previous Wolfenstein games and builds on it to add some extra game mechanics in terms of character and weapon upgrades to give the series a new take. Whereas the new mechanics are interesting, they aren't very much fun. Early on when playing the game I didn't put much thought into the upgrade system until I hit a brick wall in terms of enemies being so hard I couldn't progress. When that happened I felt the game was forcing me to upgrade things I wasn't sure would make progression easier. In the end a combination of weapon and character upgrades along with staying ONLY on the designated mission path was the ticket to making progress in the game. Youngblood has a hub world system where you can veer off the mission path and if you do, the increased enemy difficulty will obliterate you unless you are some kind of shooter Godess.

Besides the upgrade system, the actual shooter part of the game is top notch. The guns feel great and I enjoyed each one quite a bit. Each enemy has a weakness to a particular gun type which forced me to use different guns beyond just camping out on the shotgun or machine gun.

Youngbloods story is about as good as anything from the main games but there isn't much of it, which is a shame. There is plenty of game here I just feel that the story that ties it together is pretty sparse and I wanted quite a bit more of it. According to Bethesda, Youngblood will the the springboard for the series right into Wolfenstein 3 which should be the conclusion of this new Wolfenstein game trilogy. I don't want to spoil any of the story, but what they did set up in Youngblood should make for a great ending to the Wolfenstein series.

While Youngblood isn't the best entry in the series, there is enough fun to be had to keep things interesting until the end. There is quite a bit more to play after the main campaign is over but I don't imagine i'll finish the remaining missions now that the story is over. If you haven't played any of the new Wolfenstein games I heartily recommending picking up the Alt History Collection.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 11/14/2021 at 02:08am

No rating? I sometimes find it difficult to give games a rating.

You didn't mention the co-op part, which I think is a very big mechanic in the game. I know you don't have to play w/ another person (as per our conversation in another post), I was just asking if you thought it would be better. Perhaps the question I really mean is, how is the AI co-op? Does it also switch weapons depending on an enemy's weakness?

You said you hit a wall. I'm guessing I hit that wall much earlier in the game than you did. I barely played it and didn't enjoy the difficulty and just gave up.

Since you mentioned the Switch, I kind of feel sorry for the Switch. It does seem to be popular, and really it's the only current gen console I care about, but it seems incredibly weak. It seems to be getting the same games as the current gen, but they appear to be much worse, or at least very graphically unappealing due to the hardware. This makes sense for how the Switch operates, but I find it quite disappointing. Maybe some people care more about the ability to travel and play these games and that's more important than graphical quality and performance.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about this!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/15/2021 at 03:40am

> No rating? I sometimes find it difficult to give games a rating.

Ooops, totally forgot. It's pretty rad.

> You didn't mention the co-op part, which I think is a very big mechanic in the game. I know you don't have to play w/ another person (as per our conversation in another post), I was just asking if you thought it would be better. Perhaps the question I really mean is, how is the AI co-op? Does it also switch weapons depending on an enemy's weakness?

AI co-op is a lot of fun. You have three lives that you share with your co-op partner so if one of you goes down you have some time to revive them without losing a life. That mechanic basically meant we didn't lose very many shared lives. Also, there is a cool mechanic where you can toss a death metal hand gesture in the air and send you and your partner more armor every 30 seconds or so which is very helpful.

That said, I didn't feel like I was babysitting my AI partner and she helped out quite a bit.

> You said you hit a wall. I'm guessing I hit that wall much earlier in the game than you did. I barely played it and didn't enjoy the difficulty and just gave up.

I hit it pretty early on, I just kept going with it. But it's really different than any other Wolf game and I just started the original Dishonoroed and you can tell Arkane made Youngblood because it feels a lot like Dishonored.

> but it seems incredibly weak.

Compared to your PC most of my computers are weak. 🤣

> Maybe some people care more about the ability to travel and play these games and that's more important than graphical quality and performance.

The mobile aspect of the Switch is a big draw to it for sure. That said, I've been playing nearly 100% XBox Series X lately but Celeste pulls me back to the Switch when my son wants me to play it which is generally whenever he is staying with me.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 11/15/2021 at 03:55am

>AI co-op is a lot of fun. You have three lives that you share with your co-op partner so if one of you goes down you have some time to revive them without losing a life. That mechanic basically meant we didn't lose very many shared lives. Also, there is a cool mechanic where you can toss a death metal hand gesture in the air and send you and your partner more armor every 30 seconds or so which is very helpful.

>That said, I didn't feel like I was babysitting my AI partner and she helped out quite a bit.

Cool! Thanks for sharing that tidbit. I think that's an important thing to know about, since co-op is a main feature of the game.

>I hit it pretty early on, I just kept going with it. But it's really different than any other Wolf game and I just started the original Dishonoroed and you can tell Arkane made Youngblood because it feels a lot like Dishonored.

I think I hit that wall right away. Seeing that you hit it early on, too, makes me feel not so bad. Sometimes games *really* piss me off. I give up very easily, too. I've been trying to think that if a game really pisses me off that much then to give it up, it's not worth it. I can't say I've been good at following that, though. Part of Mad Max really pissed me off, but I stuck w/ it and eventually finished it, but it was brutal.

>Compared to your PC most of my computers are weak. 🤣

Yeah, but Travis has me jealous of his hardware now. LOL I very much want like a 3090 Ti (for some reason when it comes to PC hardware I pretty much won't settle for less than the best), but it'd take me a while to save up to afford one. I'm already hoping to save money to buy a monitor that's about as expensive, though I may end up settling for one that's about half the price. This is the same 1920x1200 60hz Dell monitor I got w/ the Alienware. It's still fine for me, but I want to experience new tech, which I'm sure it's going to drive me to want a new GPU, since it'll probably make mine look much weaker. (As an aside, my GPU currently costs double what I paid for it a couple years ago.)

>The mobile aspect of the Switch is a big draw to it for sure. That said, I've been playing nearly 100% XBox Series X lately but Celeste pulls me back to the Switch when my son wants me to play it which is generally whenever he is staying with me.

Yeah, some games on the Switch seem quite logical to me. Terraria is another great example of a game I think that's perfect for the Switch. But something like the new GTA remastered trilogy just doesn't make any sense to me. Ark is on it, too, which blows my mind (and I've heard it's the worst version of them all).

Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts on Youngblood, I appreciate it!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/15/2021 at 04:42pm

> Yeah, some games on the Switch seem quite logical to me. Terraria is another great example of a game I think that's perfect for the Switch

Due to its controls I haven’t found Terraria to be fun on any other platform than one with a keyboard and mouse.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 11/15/2021 at 09:40pm

I barely played Terraria on the Wii U, but I agree with you.

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We've Got This Shit Sis!

Wolfenstein: Youngblood has a shiny new trailer out as well as launch date of July 26th along with some pretty fun news. Not only will Youngblood ship on PC, PS4 and XBox One on launch but also the Nintendo Switch! It's awesome to see iD Software treating Switch as a first release platform and if the Doom and Wolfenstein II ports were a tell, the game should run really well. The best way to play this will be on a fully maxed PC but the Switch offers a cool option to people that have the system and don't care about 60fps 4K graphics.

That said, the game is set in the 80's where BJ Blazkowicz is missing and his twin daughters attempt to find him in Paris. Hmmmmm,... Read All